World

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump vs Biden could be the worst presidential debate in history

Ding ding ding! Trump vs Biden, the debate rematch, is on – so brace yourselves for the worst presidential tussle in history! This time, ladies and gentlemen, they’re four years older. The truth is Trump does not have a very good record in presidential debates In 2020, in the first presidential debate of a Covid-riven election, the two old men set a new low for American politics by shouting over each other like drunk slobs in a bar. Trump, who may have been suffering from Covid himself, decided to attack Joe Biden for among other things his handling of the swine flu in 2009, when Joe was vice-president. ‘Don’t ever use the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is spiralling out of control

The cold-blooded execution of two prison guards at a Normandy motorway toll on Tuesday has shocked France. It is for many commentators and politicians incontrovertible evidence of the ‘Mexicanisation’ of the Republic. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has told the escaped prisoner and his accomplices that they will be hunted down and punished, but it better be done quickly. With every passing hour that they remain at liberty it reinforces the image of a state that, in the words of Senator Bruno Retailleau, ‘has lost control’. Other politicians are talking of a ‘war’. Eric Zemmour told an interviewer the country was engaged in ‘a civil war’, while Francois-Xavier Bellamy of the

Rohit Kachroo

Gangs of Tehran: how Iran takes out its enemies abroad

‘It was Friday afternoon, around 2.45. I came out of the house and was going towards the car on the driver’s side,’ Pouria Zeraati says casually. Zeraati – a presenter at the London-based TV station, Iran International – is recounting what was probably an Iranian state-sponsored attack. ‘I was approached by a man who pretended to be someone asking for £3. The second man then approached. They held me strong, very firmly, and the first person stabbed me in my leg.’ The Iranian regime is reshaping the murder-for-hire market in the US and parts of Europe Zeraati is talking on his first day back at work since he was knifed

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Ahmad Massoud: ‘I’m 100% sure I can topple the Taliban’

It’s fighting season in Afghanistan again. When the Americans were in charge, after the poppy fields had been harvested in late spring, and the madrassas in Pakistan that supplied the Taliban with fanatical soldiers had finished for the term, the Islamists kicked off the fighting. Between 2001 and 2021, around 200,000 people died, including 453 Britons. Now an insurgent group called the National Resistance Front (NRF) are starting the annual springtime assaults, this time against the Taliban government. ‘The Taliban do not possess the support of the mass of the people. We do’ ‘In the past 31 days, we have staged 31 attacks on Taliban, only in Kabul,’ Ahmad Massoud,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Veep show: who will Trump pick for his running mate?

We are in the fifth week of Donald Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial and the real scandal is that it’s all so intensely boring. Sex, porn-star witnesses, shady lawyers, a president in the dock – the headlines are a tabloid dream. The crux of the case, however, is a bunch of tedious charges to do with tax reporting and accountancy. Who wants to read about that?   Trump is ‘not looking for an heir because that would be Macbeth or King Lear, a bloodbath’ Trump adores the attention, naturally. As the greatest showman of the 21st century he understands that we, the people, need fresh drama and new characters. That’s why, while

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Natalie Elphicke defects, wages rise and Switzerland takes Eurovision

Home The parliamentary Labour party shook itself uneasily after Natalie Elphicke, the MP for Dover, crossed the floor of the Commons and joined it, because she found the Conservatives too left wing. Monty Panesar, the former England cricketer, left George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain a week after being announced as a parliamentary candidate. Some Liberal Democrat party members complained to the Equality and Human Rights Commission about the deselection as a candidate for Sutton and Cheam of David Campanale, an Anglican. The Commons voted by 170 to 169 for MPs arrested for serious sexual or violent offences to be banned from attending parliament. The government bruited plans to stop

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Who could be Trump’s VP?

32 min listen

Freddy Gray talks to American columnist and commentator Guy Benson about who is in the running to be Trump’s Vice President. Who does Trump want? But more importantly what does the Trump ticket need?  Also: Biden/Trump debates appear to have been confirmed. Who will the debates benefit most? And how relevant are they in the digital age? Produced by Natasha Feroze and Patrick Gibbons. 

Dalibor Rohac

The assassination attempt on Robert Fico will change Slovakia for ever

Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico is fighting for his life in hospital after being shot several times. While it is impossible to fully flesh out the consequences of today’s assassination attempt, it is safe to say that the event is a dramatic game changer for Slovak, and potentially for Central European, politics. During a meet and greet with the public following a cabinet meeting in the small mining town of Handlová, a man reportedly shouted at Fico, ‘Rob, come here,’ before shooting at him three or four times aiming at his chest and abdomen. The prime minister fell on the ground before being taken by his protection officers to the car and

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Zelensky feels the pressure as Russian offensive intensifies

Volodymyr Zelensky this morning cancelled all of his upcoming foreign trips. He was scheduled to travel to Madrid on Friday to meet King Felipe VI. The news was announced by the president’s press secretary, and comes as Ukrainian troops struggle to hold back a renewed offensive by Russia in the Kharkiv region. Recognising the urgency of the situation, Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, who has been in Kyiv this week, said the US would provide another $2 billion (£1.6 billion) in funds on top of the $60 billion aid package signed off by Joe Biden earlier this month. The fighting in the Kharkiv region has been intensifying for

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The Normandy prisoner escape shines a light on France’s criminal underworld

‘Sometimes when we turn on the television we get the impression that nothing’s going well in France,’ Emmanuel Macron said on Monday. ‘I don’t think it’s true.’ France’s president has developed a knack of being overtaken by events – and so it has proved once again. A huge manhunt is underway after two prison guards were shot dead near Rouen in Normandy. The security officers were gunned down as they transferred a prisoner, described by police sources as a notorious drugs smuggler nicknamed ‘The Fly’, whose real name is Mohamed A. Two vehicles blocked the prison van on the A154 motorway and, as the prisoner was sprung, two of the guards

Sam Meadows

Javier Milei is torn between the West and China

Javier Milei pledged to ‘make Argentina great again’ when he took to the stage in February at the CPAC meeting of right-wing thinkers in the United States. The Argentine president is a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist who, like Donald Trump, rose to prominence promising to deliver shockwaves to his country. The first six months of Milei’s presidential term have been notable for the sudden domestic reforms he has enacted – cutting government ministries, devaluing the peso and slashing subsidies – but he has also found himself at the heart of tensions between the world’s two great powers, America and China. On this, he is acting uncharacteristically carefully. Ending economic cooperation with China

Alexander Larman

Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation labelled ‘delinquent’

If there is one thing that Harry and Meghan excel at, it is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Their much-hyped trip to Nigeria – a royal visit in all but name – had, from their perspective, gone exceptionally well. Not only did Harry manage to deliver a well-received speech about mental health to a group of students, but the pair were besieged by admirers and well-wishers everywhere they went, all desperate for a selfie, a handshake or a hug. Little wonder, then, that Meghan – never shy about jumping on a bandwagon or seizing an opportunity – solemnly declared that she had taken a DNA test that revealed

Paul Wood

Could a Trump conviction really change the presidential election?

The first time I heard the name ‘Michael Cohen’ was in 2015, from a Republican political operative who told me: ‘It’s his job to clean up Trump’s messes with women.’ He went on to explain how Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, would pay a large amount in cash to whichever actress-model-stripper-pornstar was claiming to have been screwed, dumped or knocked-up by The Donald. And, crucially, Cohen – Trump’s ‘designated thug’ as he called himself – would scare the hell out of the women concerned to make sure they signed an airtight NDA (or non-disclosure agreement). Over the years, this story has turned out to be far more durable than

Alexander Kolyandr

Is Andrei Belousov Russia’s Albert Speer?

President Vladimir Putin’s appointment of the civilian economist Andrei Belousov as Russia’s defence minister in the third year of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is bad news for Kyiv and its allies. Replacing the unpopular Sergei Shoigu with Belousov marks a clear shift in Putin’s strategy: he views the war as a battle of economic attrition.  There is hardly anyone better suited for the job than Belousov. A Soviet-trained economist, he cut his teeth in academia before joining the government just months before Putin became prime minister in 1999. Since then, he has climbed through the ranks to become Putin’s economic advisor and, from 2020, the First Deputy Prime Minister, overseeing

Monday

Jim Lawley

Catalonia has gone cold on independence

Is Catalonia’s independence movement dead in the water? Elections held in the region on Sunday reveal that support for separatist parties dropped significantly. Between them, the hard-line Junts per Catalunya, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and two small separatist parties only managed 61 seats – of which 35 went to Junts. In the regional parliament, 68 seats are required for a majority. This is an anticlimatic end to an impassioned, and at times dramatic, saga for the region. On 27 October 2017, confident that the European Union would welcome a new, freedom-loving net-contributor to its budget, Catalonia boldly declared itself ‘an independent and sovereign state’. But rather than a warm welcome,

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

China’s vendetta against Nato

46 min listen

Last week, President Xi Jinping visited Serbia. An unexpected destination, you might think, but in fact the links between Beijing and Belgrade go back decades. One event, in particular, has linked the two countries – and became a seminal moment in how the Chinese remember their history. In 1999, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed by US-led Nato forces. Three Chinese nationals died. An accident, the Americans insisted, but few Chinese believed it then, and few do today. The event is still remembered in China, but now, little talked about in the West. Xi’s visit was timed to the 25th anniversary of the bombing itself. ‘The China-Serbia friendship, forged

Terry Barnes

Elon Musk has won a victory for free speech in Australia

In the unedifying clash of heads between billionaire Twitter/X owner, Elon Musk, and Australia’s e-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant, there could only be one rightful winner. Elon Musk. On Monday, Musk’s X succeeded in having a temporary injunction thrown out by Australia’s Federal Court preventing it and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta from posting images of last month’s Sydney stabbing. An Armenian Orthodox bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel, was attacked in his church, allegedly by a religiously radicalised youth, in April. The incident was captured by the church’s own livestream of the event and beamed across the internet: the footage is disturbing but already there for the world to see, if anyone chose

Mark Nayler

Catalans appear to be growing tired of independence

Spain’s Socialist party (PSOE) won crucial elections in Catalonia over the weekend, beating a pro-independence bloc whose support has been declining steadily over the last few years. The Socialists were led by Salvador Illa, who served as Spain’s health minister during the pandemic. The party will now have the first shot at forming the region’s next government, despite being 26 seats short of a majority. The negotiations are likely to last for weeks, and may have an impact on the national administration led by Pedro Sanchez, which itself is heavily reliant on the support of Catalan separatists. Sunday’s election was a de facto vote on Catalan secession, which has been

Eliot Wilson

Sunak’s dire warning will fall on deaf ears

Even on the most optimistic reading, Rishi Sunak is drinking in the last-chance saloon. Today the Prime Minister is delivering a speech which is supposed to kick-start the general election campaign. Sunak wants to demonstrate that the Conservative party has the vision and policies to guide the country through a dangerous and uncertain future. But Sunak’s speech seems to be striking the wrong note: one of doom and gloom rather than optimism. Sunak’s speech has been rapidly dismissed as a bungled relaunch It’s no surprise that Sunak’s speech has been rapidly dismissed as a bungled relaunch. The PM’s thesis is that the next few years will see more change than

Charles Parton

The Harvard man who became Xi Jinping’s favourite academic

Xi Jinping is a busy man. He holds down three jobs. As General Secretary of the Chinese Communist party (CCP), he rules 1.4 billion people and disciplines 100 million party members; as Chairman of the Military Commission, he commands and reforms the world’s largest army; and as president, he glad-hands a succession of Beijing-bound heads of states. In his spare time he has also authored ten books. So you can be sure that when he carves out time for a separate meeting with a hitherto unremarkable American academic, it is not without purpose. Graham Allison, in case you have not heard of him, is an historian with a chair at